June 30, 2015

Revit User Groups: Interested in enhancing project collaboration in real–time? Join us to learn how Revu’s integrated cloud solution, Bluebeam Studio, can host virtual meetings that enable remote project partners from across the globe to collaborate online in real time. Watch us demonstrate how project teams can collaborate on the fly via Studio Sessions, where multiple users can redline a single copy of the same PDF together in real time or separately on their own time from a desktop, tablet PC or an iPad.

Nick Decker
Nick Decker has over five years of experience in the architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) industry. As an Industry Specialist for Bluebeam Software, Nick helps companies build streamlined workflows and develop cost–saving strategies by leveraging technology to remove pain points.

Prior to his role at Bluebeam, Nick held positions in which he participated in all phases of the building lifecycle: design, estimation, scheduling, pre–construction, project management and closeout, which included pre–construction of a clean–coal plant and overseeing the closeout of a Super Bowl host site.

During his time in the field, Nick developed a passion for improving historically paper–intensive processes using digital solutions. His ability to identify promising solutions and provide effective training helped accelerate adoption timelines and learning curves, ultimately saving his clients both time and resources. Nick received his Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering from Purdue University.

Each class is designed to give you specific, improved results in a particular topic. You can interact with the instructor right from your own office, while eliminating travel time. Because the class schedule rotates, you can easily select your topics of interest and choose the day which best meets your schedule.

June 25, 2015

With Ideate Explorer, you can review the information in your Revit model in many different ways. Most users are familiar showing elements within the Entire Project or limiting the elements to only the Active View.

Did you also know that you can select elements in the Revit canvas first, and then choose the Current Selection option? If Ideate Explorer is not open and you have selected elements in the model, it will default to Current Selection when Ideate Explorer first opens. You can always change the Display setting to Current Selection after selecting elements in the Revit Model.

Tip: A selection box drawn from left to right will only include those objects completely contained within the selection box. While a selection box drawn from right to left will include any object that overlaps the selection box rectangle.

This is a great way to see how many elements and what categories have been selected. In my example image below, I can quickly see that the room I selected has 147 Revit elements. I’m only getting the categories and instances for the elements that I have selected in the Revit canvas.

Read the rest of this valuable Ideate Explorer for Revit workflow and see the video by Richard Taylor on the Ideate Software Blog.

4000 ADELINE STREET, EMERYVILLEThey converted this single-story brick warehouse in Emeryville into a two-story self-storage facility for City Storage of San Francisco, retaining the brick shell but completely gutting the interior and adding a new steel framed structure. Behind the brick they added a new concrete wall that extends above the brick walls to accommodate the new second floor. Folded Corten panels designed by local artisan, Melissa MacDonald cover the exposed concrete and make a distinctive pattern around the top of the building. They added a partial third floor for a 2-bedroom managers unit. A tenant space at the corner of the building will be a home to a new bar/restaurant (currently under construction).

Both the interior and exterior of this 2,600 sq. ft. single story building were in need of repair and upgrades. Within the limits of a small budget they were able to completely transform the building, giving SVS Group a contemporary office space with a rustic “Loft” feel. In order to open up the interior, they removed the dropped ceiling to expose the existing roof joists. Natural light was brought into the space with the addition of skylights. A blackened steel and glass façade with a custom steel sunshade marks the doorway to the office. The scope of work included a new lobby with a custom built reception desk, two conference rooms, open office space and three private offices.

As the ENI Team Lead at Ideate, I had the opportunity of attending Autodesk Technical Academy in Texas earlier this year. Not only was it a great opportunity to meet and network with the Autodesk Team, but also a chance to find out what tools and tricks they use when assisting customers.

One of the great tips that we received came from a Civil 3D troubleshooting session that was hosted by Jason Ferrelli of Autodesk. Along with techniques for troubleshooting common issues, he also brought up some frequently requested features that customers are asking for. Some of these features happened to be available already, but only with the added installation of a Country Kit.

For those who are not familiar with Country Kits, Autodesk releases additional tools and utilities that were created for specific workflows or tasks from different countries around the world. At last count, 22 of these were available to download for free from the Autodesk Knowledge Network. Although they are referred to as “Country” Kits, they are not restricted to use in that country, or with that version. Anyone can download and install a Country Kit to gain access to the tools and features that are included in it.

We looked at some of the tools in the Australia & New Zealand Country Kit, and that’s now something that I personally have added to my Civil 3D installation. Some of the tools that are included with this kit are:

2D to 3D Contour Conversion

Surface Analysis Import/Export from a File (this is awesome if you’ve ever spent time setting up a Surface Analysis only to realize it’s only for ONE surface in ONE drawing)

Surface Analysis Copy to another Surface (also a great way to apply the same analysis settings to a second surface in the file without having to manually set it up again)

Convert Blocks to COGO Points

The download links and instructions for installing the Country Kits (along with detailed ReadMe files explaining the features) can be found below...

As of May 29, these have also been updated for the 2016 release of Civil 3D. Once the Country Kit is added to your installation, it appears under the Toolbox tab of Civil 3D’s Tool space.

If any of those features were ones that you’ve been looking for, or if there are others that seem like they should already be around, maybe they are… just not in your country. Take a look at the Country Kits to find out if one of those as the tools you’re looking for.

For information on training and consulting for the various products Ideate services, visit our website at www.ideateinc.com

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Matt Miyamoto, P.E., ACIENI Manager and Senior Application Specialist Matt is an ENI Manager and Senior Application Specialist in Ideate, Inc.’s Seattle office. He has a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering and is a licensed Civil Engineer. Prior to joining Ideate, Matt worked as a civil engineer, using Civil 3D on a variety of projects including site development, roadway improvements and infrastructure design. With over 10 years of experience in the civil engineering industry, Matt now provides training, consulting, technical support, and implementation strategies for organizations transitioning to Civil 3D. Matt is an Autodesk Certified Instructor (ACI), as well as an Autodesk Certified BIM Specialist: Roads and Highway Solutions. Additionally, Matt is and Autodesk Certified Professional for AutoCAD, and AutoCAD Civil 3D. He can be found on twitter as @MattM_PEGet it. Know it. Use it.

Each class is designed to give you specific, improved results in a particular topic. You can interact with the instructor right from your own office, while eliminating travel time. Because the class schedule rotates, you can easily select your topics of interest and choose the day which best meets your schedule.

June 18, 2015

We are excited to announce that our team has moved to a new location in downtown Portland. We spent our last ten years in the Fox Tower about a half mile away from our new location in the Columbia Square Building. The new office offers more square footage and a view of the Willamette river. More importantly, it has allowed us to rethink our layout. The Fox Tower served us well, but we couldn't be more thrilled about our new location.

Located in the heart of downtown, and s

et back about one block from the Waterfront, The Columbia Square Building is conveniently located close to both the Max and the bus lines for easy in and out access. We are surrounded by numerous acclaimed Portland restaurants, and several parking garage options for your convenience. The Columbia Square building offers both garage bike parking as well as secured bike parking.

June 17, 2015

While at the CLSA/NALS Surveyors conference this year, a surveyor presented a challenge she was having in creating a Civil 3D point label style for existing manholes with multiple connecting pipes. The goal was to use a single point label style with five label components (one component each for up to 4 incoming pipes and 1 outgoing pipe) that only displays a line of text for pipes that have invert data.

At first thought, this may be an easy fix if the Text Component Editor - Contents only contained Properties. However, the typical invert data label needs to show pipe direction, diameter, invert elevation, and possibly material. The contents for each component must include text entities besides extracted properties. The undesired result are lines of text displaying even when there is no pipe data. Not only do we want unused lines to not display, we want the invert out component to move up the list.

After poking around a bit, I consulted with Jeff Mishler of Quux Software who has taken on continued development and support of Sincpac-C3D. His answer was an elegant use of Expressions for the Label Component Text Height.

The point label expression uses an IF function to test whether there is any data in the User Defined Property, UDP, for pipe diameter. If the test is true (a non-zero value), the tru val is returned and used for the Text Height, 0.07/12 (works out to .07”). If the test is false, the false_val of 0 is returned. Note that there is a separate expression for each component/pipe. Each expression tests its corresponding UDP for pipe diameter.

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When a label component text height is 0, the entire line does not display regardless of whether there are text entities in the contents. So, the next label component with data moves up the list giving us a label with no gaps or empty text strings.

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An expression for the Component Text Height eliminates the need for multiple point label styles and point groups to address manholes with two, three, or four connecting pipes. Having one Point Label Style for surveyed manholes will save the technician time when importing hundreds of points. Thank you Jeff.

For information on training and consulting for the various products Ideate services, visit our website at www.ideateinc.com

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Daniel Armstrong, P.E., LSITENI Application Specialist Daniel is an Application Specialist for Infrastructure Solutions at the Ideate Sacramento office. He is a California licensed Civil Engineer and LSIT with over 9 years land development design experience and 6 years Civil–GIS software consulting. Additionally, he provided 6 years of engineering support at a municipal public works department. At Ideate, Daniel assists Civil Engineering and Surveying firms in maximizing their utilization of AutoCAD Civil 3D through consulting, training, mentoring, and technical support. He conducts standard classroom and custom training on AutoCAD, Map 3D, and Civil 3D. Get it. Know it. Use it.

Each class is designed to give you specific, improved results in a particular topic. You can interact with the instructor right from your own office, while eliminating travel time. Because the class schedule rotates, you can easily select your topics of interest and choose the day which best meets your schedule.

June 12, 2015

Autodesk provides students, educators, and professionals free, self-paced, online educational courses, designed to help architects and engineers develop the skills and knowledge that can serve as a foundation for deeper application on projects and engagement with others. Designed for architecture & engineering students, educators, & professionals who want to learn how to use the latest workflows and features within Autodesk tools. Start earning your Continuing Education Units today!

June 11, 2015

Due to the nature of Revit’s data structure there are several important code-level tasks that cannot be completed by using a Revit Schedule. For example, a table that requires the comparison of two separate groups of data such as a Gross and Net Area cannot be done with a Revit Schedule. Another example is any data that requires a summary first, and THEN a rounding or a conditional format that is applied only to that summary. Plumbing Fixture Count Requirements are a typical example of this particular condition.

Most non-residential buildings have code requirements for the number of toilets, etc. based on the area usage within the proposed building. In this simple example we have two floors, each with a few Rooms (Areas can also be used). The Revit schedule is showing the results of a conditional statement applied to each Room or Area per each floor.

Fig 1: The use of the conditional formula within Revit can lead to inaccurate results.

IF, however, we were to take that data outside of Revit (which we can do with

Ideate BIMLink) we can decide WHEN the conditional formula gets applied to the data. If we first add up all the occupants per floor and THEN use the conditional statement on that subtotal, we get VERY different results: now we only need (3) men’s toilets on the first floor instead of (7)! This is saving your building owner serious money!

Ideate, Inc., is a leading Autodesk solutions provider, recognized as a Platinum Partner for Architecture, Engineering and Construction, Autodesk's highest level of authorization. Employing top registered architects, engineers and designers, Ideate offers companies in the areas of building, infrastructure and multimedia Autodesk software, training, support and custom consulting services. Ideate Authorized Training Centers are located in San Francisco, Sacramento, San Jose, Portland and Seattle.